The Influence of Racial Labeling and Gender on Illusory Correlation and Perceived Hireability

Abstract

Black and African American refer to the same demographic of people; however, describing someone as Black can lead to the belief that they are lower in competency when compared to someone described as African American. The goal of this study was to determine whether gender and the use of the racial labels of Black and African American would lead to an illusory correlation which would affect the perceived hireability of candidates. Participants were given a survey with randomly assigned mock resumes and reference letters to evaluate. Findings showed that participants remembered more negative traits about female applicants compared to their male counterparts. Negative traits were also more often remembered about female applicants under the racial label Black compared to female applicants where no racial label was used. Strong order effects were also found among participants, such that the first resume reviewed was consistently rated more positively than the second. Based on these findings, future research should examine why negative traits are disproportionately remembered about female applicants, especially Black women.